I'm sorry to trouble people with this question (moreover interject this between the
Cycletrek travelogue), but I have something
I would like your input on: that of the choice of my surname in Japanese.

I know, this has intones of the "Hashimori"
name game all over it, but I'm serious. I am finally filling out the mountain of
forms to become a Japanese citizen, and (aside from the discomfort I feel from the
silly intrusiveness--having to give my addresses since birth, having to hand-draw
maps to my office and home, having to indicate whether my relatives are "for"
or "against" my naturalization, having to provide a detailed income and
expense statement down to our monthly expenditure on groceries) I've come to realize
that an important issue I once thought was settled is far from it.

My wife and I don't see eye-to-eye on what we should call ourselves lastnamewise.
And it's something we have to settle before I can proceed.

Details: If you take out Japanese citizenship, you are obligated (but not
required) to take a Japanese-sounding name. Most do. It can be in kanji with Japanese
readings (as in perennial upper house candidate Tsurunen Marutei), katakana (as in
the last name of soccer player Ramosu Rui), roman initials (as in naturalist C.W.
Nikouru), or even romaji (as in former sumo wrestler Konishiki--who has it rendered
that way on TV, although I don't know how it looks on his koseki), but it should
fit into kana reading paradigms.

Anyway, I've mentioned in the past that I would be choosing "Arudou Debito"
(kanji 有道 出人). I like it because

1) "Arudou" is closest to my current surname, which comes out as "Arudouinkuru"
in katakana,

2) if you stretch things, the name has the earnest figurative meaning of "a
person who has a road and is going out on it",

3) it is a nice package with rhythm to it that rolls off the tongue, and, to
me most importantly,

4) I wouldn't be choosing something vanilla like "Suzuki" or "Tanaka"--"Arudou"
shows originality and nonforced assimilation; none of this Japayuki stuff for me,
thanks. I have been trying this name on for size the past couple of years and have
really come to like it.

Unfortunately, this sort of thing is not my decision alone this time. As Japan
still does not legally permit a married couple to have differing surnames (fuufu
bessei), except in the case of international marriages, whatever name I choose would
have to be tarred on my fellow-Japanese wife and daughters as well. And my wife
does not like the sound of "Arudou" at all.

Her reasoning:

1) She had my surname in katakana before, and had all sorts of trouble with it.
Computers at the time (this was 1989) wouldn't take a name that long and kept her
waiting for hours whenever we had reregister a new address. Whenever she'd give "Arudouinkuru"
over the phone or in person, people would ask her things like what bar she was hostessing
in, what nationality she was, or assume she couldn't speak Japanese. Eventually
she consulted a lawyer and got her name changed back to Sugawara, her maiden name.
The point is she doesn't really want to go through with that again with the idiot
bastard son-of-Kong in the form of "Arudou".

2) Ironically, she has gotten used to "Arudouinkuru", and wouldn't
mind that in katakana if she had to have a foreign-sounding name. But "Arudou"
as a contraction just doesn't have that cute round-off ring of "inkuru".
Anyway, since she has a choice at this juncture, that's not her first choice.

3) She would vastly prefer to keep herself (and our kids) as they are: "Sugawara".
Arudou Ayako, Arudou Ami, Arudou Anna? Not on her box of Wheaties. Most people
would look at the Arudou kanji and read it "Arimichi" anyway. We'd spend
our life correcting people unnecessarily. So what's wrong with the ring of "Sugawara
Debito" anyway?

Well, I'll tell you what's wrong. Once upon a time I went by the "Sugawara
Debito" moniker when I was working for a Japanese company, between 1991 and
1992, at a time in my life when I was trying to be more Japanese than the Japanese.
I ended up in pretty bad shape. It's a long story, but fifteen months of hazing,
humiliation, physical, mental, and alcohol abuse, along with my boss trying to get
my wife into some kind of huddle, I sloughed off that evil lifestyle and became an
academic, determined never to get into that that sort of situation again. To me,
"Sugawara Debito" is synonymous with "Uncle Tom". It smacks
of a lack of free will, a contrived degree of fitting in, and is half-assed in its
approach to show things done "my way" (cue music).

My wife says get with the program--that stuff happened already over half a decade
in the past. And "Arudou Debito" sounds pretty silly, anyway. That I
simply cannot agree with.

But the writing is on the wall: given the intransigence of Japan's bureaucracy over
issues of identity, even the Ministry of Justice was careful to caution us last time
we were there that we should be in agreement over our name. Because once the plunge
is taken, there's no turning back.

So that's the issue in a nutshell. I don't know if it's merely an issue of taste,
but we are at an impasse. We agreed that getting more input from third parties wouldn't
hurt, so here I am asking for it. Comments?

Dave Aldwinckle (for now)
Sapporo

COMMENTS FROM THE WORLD ON THIS:

(sent to the world Mon, 30 Aug 1999)

NATURALIZATION--PERSONAL NAMES: RESULTS

As I am loath to ask for opinions and then be selfish with what I get, I am sending
you this follow-up post as means of establishing some info comity (and to try and
get discussions back on track: even the name game is better than the flame game
currently holding sway round here).

First off, although I have already thanked constructive posters individually, let
me reiterate a thank you to you all again for all the feedback (more is welcome if
you have it). I haven't seen so many responses to one of the topics I've brought
up since the Gender Issues Debate of November '98. Anyway, FWIW, here are the results
of a perhaps-meaningless straw poll. Narrowing the options down to a three-celled
paradigm:

////////////////////////////////////TOTAL NUMBER OF RESPONSES (both online and in interpersonal discussions): 41

So in terms of opinion polls, my wife either had the stronger argument, or the status
quo holds greater weight than the impetus for change. If I were Bill Clinton my
decision would be made.

Now, people's arguments in brief for each cell:

////////////////////////////////////1) "KEEP ARUDOU DEBITO"

"This is a no-brainer, Dave", said colleague Simon. "You are not
Sugawara. You are Aldwinckle. And Arudou, so you feel, is the closest to it. Don't
change into what you are not." Other friends said that Arudou isn't all that
unnatural (Nagano-ken apparently has some "Aruga"s), and that the name,
from what they know about me as a person, suits me. The common root to this school
of thought was that whatever I personally thought suited me should do.

Geoffrey had the funniest comment when he said:

"Personally I think Arudou is fine but you need do work on the Debito part,
especially if you are going to be dealing with Japanese banks...they have
enough debito already!! How about Deibu.."

Looking down at my paunch, that name might even suit me better. My students have
already been using it quite liberally...

d) "It's the 90's, dude", said Courtney. Nothing wrong or even unusual
for me to take a maiden name. Other Japanese women echoed this by saying, "If
I had had the choice, I would have kept my maiden name. Your wife does have the
choice, so I fully understand her digging in her heels."

Other considerations (aside from a few people thinking I was "nuts" for
naturalizing in the first place) including getting kudos from the in-laws
(which is not part of the equation because my wife considers, after her retaking
the name back in court, the name as hers, not the family property or decision of
anyone else's) and just plain making my wife happy (I've appparently already put
her through enough with traipsing off to Kobe during disasters or risking my life
on errant bicycle trips).

But the communality of conversation was in the consideration of my children's future.
Why give them Arudou when they are perfectly happy with Sugawara? I did, BTW, ask
them which name they preferred a couple of days ago, and to my surprise both Amy
and Anna said Arudou. Then I asked them the next day and Amy changed her mind to
Sugawara. I just asked them an hour ago and they both now said Sugawara. Like a
scene out of the movie TWELVE ANGRY MEN. Anyway, such are the sensitivities of a
four and six year old.

////////////////////////////////////3) "GO FOR A NEUTRAL/NATURAL/DIFFERENT SURNAME"

If indecisive, punt. People suggested "Arimichi" (which sounds like "Ant
Path" to me), recombinent syllabery of my name (the funniest being "Debarudo
Debito"), or searching memory banks for people I admire ("Beato Takeshi"
isn't dead yet, "Konishiki" is not quite the profile I want, and "Iijima
Ai" just doesn't fit, somehow. Then again, there's "Fukuzawa"...).

I did sit down and go through the Sapporo phone book (since I like being at the head
of the alphabet--always have been--I searched the "a"s) and did go through
all the kanji there ("ai" is too mendokusai to write, "ara" sounds
too rough, "atsu" too fat, "abe" too Lincoln...). I went through
combinations of my name in old English (Aldwinckle means "old bend in the river",
which might be "Furukawa" or "Furufuchi"--both elicited yuks
from me and yucks from my wife), and even spent the weekend fielding instantaneous
inspirations (Me: "Hey, how about 'Kitamichi'?" Her: "Whatever,
just hurry up and get offa me.")

After explaining all the email responses and mindsets to Aya (who did feel a tad--I
repeat, a tad--vindicated), she said that she doesn't want any stranger's name.
She could accept either Arudou or Sugawara but of course would vastly prefer the
latter.

So our standpoints are still different but definitely not as acidulous as before.
Hey, I didn't expect a magical elixir argument, but I did get a post which really
was enlightening of how important this decision is:

I was born Jessica Preczewski-a quite obviously Polish name-and even though I endured
countless Pollack jokes, I was ok with the name because I had a lot of Polish pride.
My father had done a good job teaching his children Polish history and a little
bit of the language and customs, and my mother, to show her support of our Polish
heritage, prepared a traditional Polish Christmas meal every year.

But by the time I was a high school senior, my father had reached his breaking point.
He had for many years suffered job discrimination and
humiliations in social situations due to his name. When I was a senior, he changed
professions from high school administrator to certified financial planner. It was
at this time that he changed the family name to Westmoreland. He told us he did
it for several reasons, but one was that he didn't want to lose clients due his name.

I'm from Kansas so perhaps being surrounded by "country folk" had something
to do with the uneducated, unenlightened Polish jokes.

Once when my father went on a job interview to Montana for a high school principal
position, the man interviewing my father took him around town to meet different business
owners. It was a small college town and one of the men that my father was introduced
to said to the interviewer, "Oh no! Another Pollack?!" My father didn't
get asked back for the third round of interviews and he believes that man's response
to his name was the reason he didn't get the job. That decided it for him. It was
after that experience that he started to seriously plan changing the family name.

He made up the name Westland on his own since he and my mother had moved west to
start a new life together, and he originally chose -land as the ending, but I convinced
him to change it to -moreland for a bit more originality. All five of my siblings
changed their surnames to Westmoreland.

The first year I was Jessica Westmoreland, it felt very strange and I felt that I
was an imposter of sorts, but after time, I didn't notice it anymore. It was just
a name.

When I married, I agreed to take Takahashi since it would make things easier for
me and the children we were planning on having. I like that my last name is simple,
and ironically, Takahashi was the name invented by husband's father who was Korean
and had to pick a Japanese name when he took Japanese citizenship. My husband's
father also found it amusing that both he and my father had changed their names to
give themselves and their children a better life.

I guess what I am trying to say is this: choose a name that will be easy for you
and the kids. Don't feel you have to prove a point. Think of your children's future.
If Sugawara is disagreeable to you and Arudou is disagreeable to your wife, then
you really have no choice but to invent an entirely new name.